Poll of the Day > Modern Games are Sensory Overload

(+) Yeah! (+)

I dont know if anybody else feels the way I do about this, but I feel that a lot of modern video games are too much to keep up with. Example for me are FPS games and certain RPGs. There are so many things that pop up on the screen and countless stuff to keep track of. I dont know how gamers manage to multitask so effectively. Im only 27 and Ive been gaming my whole life, yet I often struggle to keep up with others on games that arent on Nintendo platforms. Granted, I am very much partial to retro games and platformers, so that partially explains why I can gave trouble getting the hang of some modern games. Perhaps there is just a sort of slowness with brain processing I have or I just dont have the patience to keep up with complicated games because Id rather spend my precious time on games that dont demand so much investment.
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Yeah I came back to WoW after having not playing for years and suddenly all the different bars and info on screen was overwhelming, I still played but I felt like too much was going on for me to do anything but focus on health bars since I was healing
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Andromicus posted...

Yeah I came back to WoW after having not playing for years and suddenly all the different bars and info on screen was overwhelming, I still played but I felt like too much was going on for me to do anything but focus on health bars since I was healing

Games nowadays demand players to multitask more than before and sometimes our brains simply dont have the capacity to process things.
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Bump
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So you yell at kids to get off your lawn?
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I understand what you mean, OP. I'm 29 and also grew up playing video games my entire life; I very much prefer retro (6th gen consoles and prior) titles over most modern releases, although not quite for the reason you've described. I don't necessarily find modern games overwhelming or to be sensory overload as you've mentioned, but I do sometimes feel like there's just so much padding and bloat to menus and an excess of superfluous options... I just don't care enough to navigate everything most of the time, unless it is well-implemented into gameplay.

Part of the problem is that I think some games--both old and new--do a much better job than others at creating intuitive UI; if a game has an overabundance of options and windows that pop up, this doesn't feel quite as bad if the process of navigating from screen to screen (or executing whatever command you're attempting) flows seamlessly and requires little backtracking and hopping back and forth to properly complete your task. It's definitely an important piece of game design, and I believe it's just harder for some modern dev teams to implement well, since games are a bit more complicated than they once were.

Anyhow, just my two cents. I feel ya on this! Fortunately, there are a lot of wonderful retro titles that are still as engaging and captivating today as they were upon release, so you're certainly not in a short supply of options. :)
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I know what you mean, although, I usually don't have that problem. They are certain parts of certain games that can sometimes feel overwhelming, though I can usually get use to them. But I do understand what you mean...
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This is why 99% of MMOs are unplayable, on top of all the other Mmo garbage.
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I prefer "retro" games because I'm 39 and that's what I grew up with. The 16-bit generation is my favorite

I agree that this is a big issue with MMOs and a lot of mobile games feel like they throw a lot of random mechanics at you to confuse you / make you spend money.
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So would you say it's potentially artificial depth?
I haven't played anything past like 2012 I think. Makes me kinda nervous to see what you guys mean.
Games just seem to have taken a route that was inevitable and that was to appeal to everybody, rather than the people who would play whether it's popular or not.
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Andromicus posted...

Yeah I came back to WoW after having not playing for years and suddenly all the different bars and info on screen was overwhelming, I still played but I felt like too much was going on for me to do anything but focus on health bars since I was healing

To be fair, you would have been introduced to that complexity very gradually when you first started out, since the game doesn't dump everything on you at once. There's a lot to learn, but abilities are added relatively slowly, as are short-duration buffs/debuffs you need to worry about keeping up, and anything else you have to worry about. Coming back to it after not playing for years, you'll have forgotten most of that, but you'll need to relearn all of it at once because it's all going to be relevant. (Disclaimer: I haven't actually played WoW in nearly a decade, so maybe the learning curve isn't as smooth as I remember).

A lot of it boils down to whether or not the game's designed well, really. Being really complex isn't a bad thing if the information's readily available, and navigating that complexity is fairly intuitive. There are plenty of examples of that being done wrong, though. I've been playing a lot of Monster Hunter GU lately, and you basically need a laptop with 3-4 tabs open if you want to figure anything out in that game. There's a lot to it, mechanically, and almost none of that information is provided in-game. The gameplay's very well-tuned to reward practice and patience, and it's certainly fun, but MH really is absolutely terrible for not sharing vital information, like the amount of damage attacks do.
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That, friend, is why the only games I've care about in the last like 6 years is Doom 4, Quake Champions, and Elite: Dangerous (VR).
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CottontailGamer posted...

I understand what you mean, OP. I'm 29 and also grew up playing video games my entire life; I very much prefer retro (6th gen consoles and prior) titles over most modern releases, although not quite for the reason you've described. I don't necessarily find modern games overwhelming or to be sensory overload as you've mentioned, but I do sometimes feel like there's just so much padding and bloat to menus and an excess of superfluous options... I just don't care enough to navigate everything most of the time, unless it is well-implemented into gameplay.

Part of the problem is that I think some games--both old and new--do a much better job than others at creating intuitive UI; if a game has an overabundance of options and windows that pop up, this doesn't feel quite as bad if the process of navigating from screen to screen (or executing whatever command you're attempting) flows seamlessly and requires little backtracking and hopping back and forth to properly complete your task. It's definitely an important piece of game design, and I believe it's just harder for some modern dev teams to implement well, since games are a bit more complicated than they once were.

Anyhow, just my two cents. I feel ya on this! Fortunately, there are a lot of wonderful retro titles that are still as engaging and captivating today as they were upon release, so you're certainly not in a short supply of options. :)

That was well put! Sometimes the way develops do presentation in games can make a load of difference. And yeah, the retro classics will never go out of style and are timeless. I even enjoy a lot of retro inspired games nowadays too.
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adjl posted...

I've been playing a lot of Monster Hunter GU lately, and you basically need a laptop with 3-4 tabs open if you want to figure anything out in that game. There's a lot to it, mechanically, and almost none of that information is provided in-game. The gameplay's very well-tuned to reward practice and patience, and it's certainly fun, but MH really is absolutely terrible for not sharing vital information, like the amount of damage attacks do.

I haven't played Generations, but MH4U explained pretty much everything you'd need to know. As for the damage thing, it's honestly not important unless you feel the need to know exactly how many hits it will take to slay a monster. Monster Hunter World added the option to see the little numbers pop up, but I don't really care for it. I feel it takes away from the game.
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Metalsonic66 posted...

I haven't played Generations, but MH4U explained pretty much everything you'd need to know.

The in-game controls list is pretty limited and generally doesn't cover important combos, you can't see past the next available upgrade for a given weapon (and therefore can't decide which weapons to pursue), there's often little concrete/quantitative information given on what exactly skills do (something like Attack Up, you can figure out by looking at stats before and after activating it, but that's decidedly suboptimal), it's not at all clear what parts need breaking/where you should be searching for some rarer materials (especially things like Commendations that only come from certain quests)... There's enough in the game to get started, but you're going to need external resources if you want to take it at all seriously.

Metalsonic66 posted...

As for the damage thing, it's honestly not important unless you feel the need to know exactly how many hits it will take to slay a monster.

The exact damage, not so much, but there's no reason they couldn't include the motion values for attacks, or quantitative information for multipliers like sharpness, CB's red shield, or GS/Bow charge levels. It's generally fairly intuitive which attacks hit harder, but more nuanced comparisons are basically impossible with the information provided in-game.
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adjl posted...

The in-game controls list is pretty limited and generally doesn't cover important combos, you can't see past the next available upgrade for a given weapon (and therefore can't decide which weapons to pursue), there's often little concrete/quantitative information given on what exactly skills do (something like Attack Up, you can figure out by looking at stats before and after activating it, but that's decidedly suboptimal), it's not at all clear what parts need breaking/where you should be searching for some rarer materials (especially things like Commendations that only come from certain quests)... There's enough in the game to get started, but you're going to need external resources if you want to take it at all seriously.

Most of those things are better in World. Most of the others can be figured out on your own or through trial and error. If you don't want to check a guide in certain things you can also just ask random players (though that is of course an "external resource".

adjl posted...

The exact damage, not so much, but there's no reason they couldn't include the motion values for attacks, or quantitative information for multipliers like sharpness, CB's red shield, or GS/Bow charge levels. It's generally fairly intuitive which attacks hit harder, but more nuanced comparisons are basically impossible with the information provided in-game.

You can play the game and play it really well without knowing any of that stuff precisely. Honestly that is part of the fun of the game, trying different qeapons and combos and seeing how they compare against certain monsters.
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I'm 41, and I've never had this problem.

The most complicated games have something of a learning curve at first, but once I've dedicated my attention to a specific game, it isn't really all that hard to pay attention and juggle incoming information. Whether it's an RPG, an FPS, or most strategy games, I don't think I've ever really felt overwhelmed after the initial breaking in period.

That being said, I don't play games like bullet-hell shooters where you're constantly being overwhelmed as part of the gameplay design, or RTSes where you're expected to take in a ton of data and react to it in real time.


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The first Witcher is kind of overwhelming sometimes with the large number of quests that show up and items you don't know are important or not. But the basic mechanics are easy enough to figure out once you get past the clunky combat
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Metalsonic66 posted...

Most of those things are better in World.

Yeah, my understanding is that World added a whole lot of major QoL improvements. Some people are uppity about that, because some people are purists, but I'm generally in favour of that, provided it doesn't make the game easier. MH has always struggled a bit with the line between genuine difficulty and tedium/unnecessary obscurity, even though it's been good at providing genuine challenges.

Metalsonic66 posted...

If you don't want to check a guide in certain things you can also just ask random players (though that is of course an "external resource".

Eh, I'd count asking another player that read a guide to be the same as consulting a guide myself. Less efficient even, since the in-game keyboard is a bit of a slow way to communicate.

Metalsonic66 posted...

You can play the game and play it really well without knowing any of that stuff precisely. Honestly that is part of the fun of the game, trying different qeapons and combos and seeing how they compare against certain monsters.

While true, I don't feel you really can compare them without more detailed information. Comparing a weapon with white sharpness and 300 raw to one with purple sharpness and 250 raw is impossible without knowing what the sharpness multipliers are, unless you craft both and run a series of time attacks with each to see which performs better (which is rather time-consuming and not altogether reliable). Same with comparing crit weapons to non-crit without knowing the crit multiplier and exactly how much crit you're getting from skills. You can find something that will do the job without doing any serious theorycrafting, but that's likely to be very suboptimal unless you do some research to find out which attacks are and aren't worth using.
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